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On Attracting Competent and Driven Talent to Your Startup
Today’s overview
Introduction
Three news stories
Quote of the day
Meme of the day
My takeaways after reading ~20 essays by Paul Graham over the past week (Part 2).
Three resources we think are useful
Ideas of the week by Stratup.ai
Happy Friday! We're excited to present the sixth edition of Startup Strategist. Earlier this week, we introduced a different logo, but it didn't resonate. We appreciate the feedback. While we continue the search for a logo, we'll be sticking with our former design.
In the meantime lets dive into todays edition.
Three news stories
1) Johnny Ive and Apple Design chief to work with Sam Altman on AI devices Bloomberg (Dec 27)
2) Startup GigaML seeking to help companies deploy LLM’s offline TechCrunch
3) Will 2024 Mark the End of the ‘Digital Agency’? (Dec 27) WSJ
Quote of the day
“Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.”
Meme of the day
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My takeaways after reading ~20 essays by Paul Graham over the past week (Part 2).
Morality
The first Graham quote involves the moral nature of founders, wherein he observes that usually, successful startup founders tend to be good and kind people.
“If you want to build great things, it helps to be driven by a spirit of benevolence.”
As mentioned by Graham in part one of this discussion, people are ultimately one of, if not the most important factors for the success of a company. His point was with regard to founders in that context, but of course it extends to the people you hire.
Meaning, the success of a startup is contingent on its ability to attract good talent. The most obvious factor is salary. But mission, culture and impact are usually more important.
Hiring Competent and Driven People
“Another reason founders lose is that they can’t get the best people to work for them. They can hire people who will put up with them because they need a job. But the best people have other options.”
This reminds me of Sam Altman’s blog post I shared in this newsletter 1-2 editions ago:
“It is easier for a team to do a hard thing that really matters than to do an easy thing that doesn’t really matter; audacious ideas motivate people.”
Perhaps one of the more relevant points to this newsletter is the following:
“It’s not that important to know a lot about startups. The way to success in a startup is not be an expert on startups, but to be an expert on your users and the problem you’re solving for them… In fact, I worry it’s not merely unnecessary to learn in great detail about the mechanics of the startups, but possibly somewhat dangerous.”
To give a better understanding of what he means by the ‘inner mechanics of a startup’ comment, he provides the example of a hypothetical “undergrad who knew all about convertible notes, employee agreements and class FF stock”.
Opportunity Cost
“If you start a startup, it will take over your life to a degree you cannot imagine.”
Of course, it is like this for most businesses. It might be particularly the case for the class of startup that is common in Paul Grahams sphere. I suppose there are exceptions though.
I’ll leave you with this quote until part three, which will be the last examination of this form into the Graham essays I recently read.
“Starting a startup is really hard”.
Three resources we think are useful
Info about marketing & newsletters: https://twitter.com/holmisthename/status/1740352988101943532?s=46&t=DKhL8uejtSrZb3pqPpdhcA
The science and art of learning: Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career. (I’ll be doing a book review on this soon in the newsletter)
Artificial Intelligence: https://online.wharton.upenn.edu/blog/how-do-businesses-use-artificial-intelligence/
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Ideas of the week by Stratup.ai
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That’s all for today, thanks for reading.
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